Feminism Friday: Using pregnancy to criminalize womanhood at Pandagon

Feminism Friday: Using pregnancy to criminalize womanhood at Pandagon:
Of course, the other part of this is redefining what a child is, taking womenâ€™s participation in the creation of one out of the picture and relegating pregnant women to the role of mere incubators for children that men make. To call something a â€œchildâ€ from the moment a man shoots his load and not after a woman has grown the child for 9 months in her body is part of the project of using pregnancy as a tool to dehumanize women and subjugate us to men.

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I learned more than i wanted to about miscarriages when my sister had one a couple of years ago…it was very early on in her pregnancy, but all the same, we were very sad, my whole family. She was pretty sure what had happened in the evening, but decided to wait until the morning to go into the hospital if she could, so I came over and stayed the night in case she needed to go into the hospital in the middle of the night (someone needed to stay with Max, who was 3 at the time). I saw her the next morning, obviously, and she was additionally certain about the fact that a miscarriage had occurred and was sad, but coping.

She then spend the entire day, and by entire day I mean 10-11 hours, at the hospital being poked and prodded and questioned and having her hopes raised up (“oh, no no you didn’t have a miscarriage at all!” and then “wait, no, yes you did, yes, we’re fairly sure you did,” “oh, hold on, no, not a miscarriage!”) and then they finally sent her home, exhausted, where she promptly passed the fetus and totally broke down. And so did I, to be honest, it was a horrible thing from start to finish. If she hadn’t ever gone to the hospital and just waited until it was over (she only went because she felt she had to, not because she thought there was anything they could do; she was pretty resigned about it from the start), it would have remained a sad, but quiet experience, and probably wouldn’t have been accompanied by months and months of difficult mourning that followed. It was made so much worse by the medicalizing of it, frankly. After 3 months my sister said to me, “People expect me to be over it. I’m not over it.” And you know, neither was I. (And I’m just the committed auntie!)

I agree with what the original poster said in terms of the ownership and the politics of all of this, and the implications of it are appalling, but at the moment I’m mostly just deeply disturbed by the utter lack of compassion displayed by the people with power in this circumstance.